art

The Renaissance Cheapness of Life Like Today?

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During the summer, I have had some time to catch up on some pleasurable reading and, I must admit, binge watching of three TV series. What I found so unsettling and utterly disturbing connecting the three series was the absolute lack of value placed on human life. People killed each other with as much deliberation as they would in squashing a fly on their bedroom wall. The scenes depicted in these series could never occur today in real life, could they?

art

Belonging, Purpose, Pleasure

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Culture is the matrix of every humane society, the power-source of the imagination, empathy, creativity, and resilience needed to activate our innate capacity for moral grandeur and social healing. Begin to see culture clearly and everything changes from despair to possibility.

art

Pro Bono Blues

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The way work is valued is so distorted by now that the things we most need are the ones we are most reluctant to pay for. But what happens when this way of seeing work takes hold in the minds of those who could contribute to our collective stock of beauty and meaning?

art

The Greenest Man in America!

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Going green is about more than buying all the gluten-free quinoa you can fit in your Prius. It’s about community organizing against corporate polluters and challenging environmental racism — and then enjoying your quinoa.

art

Here We Go Again: Cultural Equity in San Francisco

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Art grants have been poorly distributed. Now, advocates for cultural equity have urged the city’s Board of Supervisors to add a million dollars to the Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Grants funding pool, created to channel support to the same communities repeatedly short-shrifted by Grants for the Arts.

art

In Memory of Ruby Dee

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Remembering the life of Ruby Dee, a great American actor whose art was not for its own sake; it was for the sake of humanity becoming both more human and more divine.

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A Review of Ali Abunimah’s The Battle for Justice in Palestine

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A review of Ali Abunimah’s latest book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine, which offers a careful explanation of what is lacking in the proposed two-state solution, and what is abundantly present in his proposed solution: self-determination for the Palestinian people.

art

Yuri Kochiyama and Amiri Baraka play 2-on-2 in Heaven

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I had this crazy dream last night. Yuri Kochiyama and Amiri Baraka were up in heaven…playing Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond in a game of 2-on-2 basketball. The stakes? Dismantling the segregated institutions of heaven. Why all the clouds gotta be white?

art

An Open Letter from 'The Shondes'

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On March 28 Brooklyn rock band The Shondes were disinvited from the Washington Jewish Music Festival due to band members’ views on Israel and Palestine. Founding members, singer Louisa Rachel Solomon and violinist Elijah Oberman, have written this open letter in response.